No water in pond

[TORAK]

I need a little advice. I am building a new house and needed plenty of backfill. So I dug a pond 120' X 85" and about 25' deep in the middle. The Problem is that there is no water filling in the hole. There are other ponds in the area that have water but not where I am at. I bought a 10 acre piece of land out a 40 acre farm field and there is a free flowing well about 500' from where my pond is. Should I try to dig deeper or should I install some kind of free flowing well. Does anyone have any suggestions. I was told that this area has a high water table by many people mainly neighbors and I just figured I would hit water as soon as we started digging. Thanks in advance for any advise or help you may give. Scott

 

[DarinRay]

Well what I would do is grab your free flowing water 500' awayand have that make up your pond. There are formulas and such for measuring the amount of makeup rate you are required to keep a healthy pond but I don't know them. /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif Tell you what you should do..... go here.....

www.pondboss.com


Darin

 

[Buck]

Where are you located? Has it rained? What is the elevation relative to your neighbors water table? What are the soil conditions? What is your climate?

Until these questions are answered, it will be difficult to assess your situation.

However, my neighbor dug a 20 ft. deep pond last July, was practically dry until this spring. It is now full. We have clay soil that runs that deep and plenty of rain.


Buck

 

[TORAK]

Buck, The house is in Southeastern Michigan in heavy clay soil. It has not rained lately and the land is flat same level as the neighbours. It is in area with a high water table and alot of free flowing wells at least that is what alot of people tell me.
Personnaly I find it hard to believe about the water table. I hope this helps. Thanks Scott

 

[MJB]

I wish I had that problem. In my yard the recipe for a pond is: Step 1: Dig a hole, any size, anywhere. Step 2: Wait 5 minutes. Step 3: Enjoy pond. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[BB_TX]

The level of the water table is very unpredictable. There is an old rock pit near here that stays full of water. Less than 100 yards from it is an old well that stays dry.
When I was a kid, we lived at the edge of a hill where it dropped off probably 150 feet over a 300 yard distance. There was a well near the edge of that hill that always held water only 6' or 8 ' feet below the surface. Would have thought the water would run out the side or bottom of the hill.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

You might try what I helped a bud of mine do. He bought an old windmill and we put it in over a well and made it work. It feeds a pond.

That was a fun chore. There's something totally self satisfying about seeing water come out of a pipe and knowing you caused it by making an old windmill work.

Since you're in clay you won't have to worry about sealing the bottom of the pond. But my bud's pond is in fine sandy soil and so I got him together with another bud who has some directional boring rigs. They use some blank-ite of some kind for forming a channel when they bore. It is the same stuff they use to seal the bottom of a pond.

But if you buy it to to seal the pond you pay three prices over what they pay to use it to form their channel while boring.

I found out about watching out for what you're asking for back in my race car days. I had a 406 small block that had thirteen and a half to one pistons. If I didn't index the plugs the pistons would close the plugs for me.

The motor builder gave me a sparkplug number. It was for boats. They were almost five bucks a piece. Then while in a lawn mower shop I saw the same exact plug but it was only two fifty. But the best deal was at Chief's auto parts. They had them for ninety nine cents each. The problem was I usually purchased twelve to sixteen at a time and that meant hitting four or more Chiefs cause they only stocked a couple at each store.

I know I just confirmed what everyone who's ever had a boat has always suspected.

Let's pray it doesn't happen to tractors.

 

[Buck]

TORAK,

All I can tell you is that last July my neighbor put in a big pond -- 20 ft. deep, probably 3/4- 1 acre, and it was mainly dry through Oct. Now it is full. (My wife is afraid it attracts water, and that our house will get consumed.... )

Now, your soil conditions sound the same as mine. Just hope your wife is a bit more reasonable.

How is it doing now? Have you had a lot of rain?

Buck

 

[oombala]

when we put in our pond (almost an acre) they kept diggin til they hit the slate blue/gray clay. this is the type needed to seal a pond otherwise it will leak out back into the ground, the guy took a adozer and smeared it like peanut butter about a foot thick. otherwise we might have had to put a plastic liner in it. guy nearby hit sand, would always seep out. so he dug out sand and trucked in the clay.